


Moebius Returned

by Jeanniemckeown



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Timelines, One Big Happy Family, Time Travel, Wraith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 10:14:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeanniemckeown/pseuds/Jeanniemckeown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wraith in the Milky Way in the distant past?  The SG-1 from Ancient Egypt go to their counterparts for help, and in the process Rodney McKay and John Sheppard get one last chance at saving the world glory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moebius Returned

Written for trope-bingo and posted in the Amnesty period.  
Trope - Time Travel AU  
Fanfiction, with no infringement intended! Pretty fluffy, based on the premise that the Puddle Jumper which ended up in the distant past with the alternate SG-1 wasn't destroyed, was fixed by Dr Carter and used thereafter.

Moebius Returned

Sam was the first one to realise that another, frightening, life form had arrived in the Milky Way. She had been wakened by Orren’s crying, and had helped him to use the chamber pot and to fall back asleep. She had gone to relieve her own bladder just outside the few rooms they had been offered for their use in the now abandoned Temple of Ra, and was readjusting her robes when she heard a low buzzing noise overhead, and instinctively ducked. A dark shape blocked out the myriad stars as it passed, swooped around again and then slipped gracefully in to land on the sand not 500 metres from where she stood.

 

She had never seen a ship quite like this one. Earth at this time was not an advanced civilisation when it came to machinery; Sam had accompanied Daniel through the Gate on a few occasions for trade purposes, and had been to planets with more advanced technology and weaponry. This ship though was sleeker than any of the lumbering mechanical devices she had seen here in the past – it reminded her of a Stealth bomber from her own time. The puddle jumper, left hidden and not, as had been discussed, destroyed, was positively clunky in comparison. Sam stole carefully inside the room, thankful that the entire village had made the move inside the extremely well hidden network of underground tunnels and rooms, to wait out the approaching sandstorm.

 

The storm was not yet upon them. Sam could see the alien craft as clearly as if she were merely meters from it, such was the dry, bright clarity of the desert air. So she could see the moment a hatch slid open on the vessel’s side, and caught her breath.

 

She at first thought that the creature who exited the craft was human, albeit abnormally tall. Then he turned, and Sam stifled a shriek, stuffing a handful of the homespun cotton blouse she wore under her wool cloak into her mouth.

 

The creature was not human. Tall, lanky, with long white hair reaching down its back, it had the face of a calculating insect, its grey skin scored along the cheekbones in a pattern of angled slashes. The thing radiated menace, and a remote coldness; Sam knew immediately that she and her family would represent only prey to this alien. Her adrenalin pumping she knew a sudden sympathy with small, furry warm blooded creatures everywhere, knowing exactly how they must feel when the feathered threat of the hawk floats above them on clear nights. She could hear the beating of her own heart.

 

“Sam?” It was Daniel’s voice, sounding sleepy, and, to her, as loud as a whipcrack. She shrank back and whipped around, her hand unerringly finding his mouth.

 

“Mpmph” Daniel protested, but stilled immediately when she shook her head frantically. The fact that her hand against his lips was trembling helped to clue him in to the fact that something serious was up. He reached up and gently removed her hand, holding it in his own for a second or two to warm it. In the sleeping area behind them, Jack snored suddenly and turned over, the sound mercifully very slight.

 

Daniel cocked his head, What is it? and Sam used hers to indicate the edge of the room where she had been standing, moving forward cautiously. She had a moment of almost unbearable panic, that the creature would have found them, that its head would appear over the edge any moment, but nothing like that happened. She got to where she had been, and Daniel came up beside her, following the trajectory of her pointing arm.

 

The alien was walking around his craft, his long black coat fanning out behind him in the wind. His white hair blew back from his face, and Daniel gripped Sam’s arm, gave a sharp intake of breath, and muttered a very unsavoury word in Abydonian. As they watched, the creature climbed back into its craft, and the spaceship rose smoothly up from the ground, making a long turn and then very suddenly speeding away so fast that it was lost to sight in a second or less.

 

Daniel let out the breath he had been holding, and released his almost painfully tight grip on Sam’s arm. She rubbed at it, but her mind was not on the sting. “Daniel? What was that thing? I gather you’ve seen them before?”

 

Daniel closed his eyes, and swayed slightly on his feet. The leather strap holding his hair in a neat plait for sleeping had loosened, and strands of the brown and grey were blowing around his head in the increasing wind.

 

“I have.” He opened his eyes and regarded her levelly. “It’s called a Wraith. Here’s the thing, Sam, there are no records to show that any of them have ever been here in the Milky Way. What we just saw was a threat not only to us and to the humans living now in this galaxy, but to the future we’ve been trying to protect all this time.” He dropped his eyes and shook his head. Sam swallowed audibly and shivered, and he realised she was terrified, putting a hand on her back to steer her back in to the sleeping area of the room behind them. “Sandstorm’s coming. They won’t be back until that’s over, at least. Let’s try and rest, and I’ll explain everything I know to you and Jack in the morning.”

 

It was a laudable aim. But there was no more sleep for either Daniel or Sam that night.

xxxxxxx

 

“So you’ve fought these things before?” Jack had already asked the question twice, but Daniel, pacing up and down the main meeting hall, hadn’t responded. Now, as Jack raised his voice, he looked up, startled.

 

“Yes, well, not me personally, but humans, yes. “ He scrubbed a hand through his hair, which he had left loose, and which fell long and wavy past his shoulders. Sam loved the feel of that hair, enjoyed running her fingers through it and playing with it for as long as Daniel would allow. She was also, if she examined her conscience, a little bit jealous of it. Her own wasn’t nearly as lush especially with the drying effect of the winds and the heat.

 

She was tired; she must be, to have let her mind wander off track like that. Shaking her head, she shifted a little closer to Jack and leaned against him, his arm coming up to hug her shoulders. Daniel was talking about Atlantis again, and how they had successfully held off the Wraith over a number of years.

 

“Thing is Daniel, they’re 5000 years in the future,” she heard herself interrupting. “What I want to know is how we protect ourselves here and now.” She looked around the room, at the anxious villagers who had gathered to hear what Daniel had to say. She imagined the sleek little spaceships cruelly, efficiently sucking up the people around the room from their tents, to be used as fodder for the Wraith. It made her shudder. Her eyes fell upon Orren, staggering about, humming and pulling the carved wooden train Jack had made for him, painstakingly, over many nights. His eyes were as blue as hers and Daniel’s and he had Daniel’s hair, lucky boy. Masha, older by 7 years, was sitting on the other side of Jack, her profile echoing his almost exactly, razor sharp cheekbones and long elegant nose. Her nostrils were flared now. Sam thought, she can smell danger.

 

Daniel’s eyes had also gone to the people, lingering on the children, their own and the others scattered about in the room. He shook his head. “They’re not supposed to be in this galaxy,” he repeated, helplessly. “We’ve fought so hard to protect the timeline, but this is wrong.”

 

“What about the ship?”

 

Jack’s question fell into a pocket of silence, and echoed slightly off the far walls. It had a ring of finality to it already, Sam thought, sighing; it had been ten years since they had made the trip back to the past, ten years in which the political situation post-Ra had stabilised somewhat. Of course they would go back, and get the ship. What other choice did they have?

 

xxxxx

Katep was dubious of their talk of aliens, insisting that they must have imagined it. Once he had had to accept that this was not the case, he pointed out that they had experienced no unfriendly incursions, and remained only half convinced by Daniel’s assurances that the Wraith would not rest until they had conquered all inhabited planets, Earth included. He finally agreed, with a few trusty family members, to stage a diversion while they reactivated and departed in the craft.

 

He had a few issues with their plan as it stood, however. “If you can travel in time, and you want to travel to Earth, here,” and he pointed to the ground, “why are you then taking the ship through the chappa’ai?” He shook his head. “It makes no sense.”

 

“The future has some nasty weapons, Katep,” Jack said bluntly. “If we show up suddenly in earth airspace, we could quite easily be shot out of the sky before we get a chance to even announce we’ve arrived.”

 

Daniel nodded. “Instead,” he explained, “we’ll take the gate to Eritha and travel forward in time there. We’ll then contact Stargate Command through the Erithian gate. We will be able to ask for permission to travel to earth through their Gate then, you see.”

 

“There are flaws in this plan,” Katep said stubbornly. “In 5000 years your Eritha may not have a gate. Earth may be very different to what you remember, even if the gate exists!”

 

They glanced at one another. Katep had unerringly focused on their two main concerns. There was no guarantee that the Erithan gate would still be in situ in the future, despite its location in a secure clearing in the mountains. And there was no guarantee that the timeline only Daniel recalled would have been restored, and that a force capable of defeating the Wraith even existed on future-Earth.

 

The silent conversation ended, and Daniel turned back to Katep. “We have to try,” he said simply.

 

In the end it had been easy. Katep craftily released a small herd of goats which promptly ran riot in the temple, distracting everyone enough for the five of them, Orren on Daniel’s shoulders, to slip away. They found the puddle jumper where they had left it, still cloaked, and it switched itself on with a hum the moment Jack walked inside. From there it was a hop, skip and jump through the gate to Eritha, to the clearing where another gate stood all alone, unprotected and unguarded.

 

xxxxx

 

“Incoming message, Sir” Walter’s voice was disinterested; SG14 were expected to call in from PGX 735-023, and any number of other SG teams could be ringing home for any reason. Walter had spent 15 years sitting in his seat facing the Stargate. Very little surprised or excited him anymore.

 

“Put them through.” General Landry spoke from directly behind him, and Walter jumped – he hadn’t heard the boss-man come in. Good thing he hadn’t been playing Angry Birds, he reflected. Since the defeat of the Ori some years ago, the galaxy had been peaceful enough that the odd computer game wouldn’t result in the fate of the Earth shifting in the balance.

 

The screen flickered, and static burst across it before settling down to form a picture. A face appeared, and Walter frowned. Behind him General Landry bent forward, his face suddenly intent.

 

“State your name,” he said harshly, and Walter whispered “I thought General O’Neill was in Washington, Sir.”

 

“He is” the General replied grimly, and barked back at the screen, ‘Who are you?”

 

“Colonel Jack O’Neill,” the face on the other side of the wormhole replied, tilting his head. ‘Although I go by plain Jack these days. Is there a General Hammond there?”

 

“I’ll ask the questions,” Landry barked back, causing a scowl to appear on the face of the self-named Colonel O’Neill. “Now listen here…” he began, and then there was a bit of a kerfuffle, and with some reluctance the Colonel moved back and was replaced by someone who could only be Daniel Jackson, and now Walter’s mouth did drop open. This Daniel was weathered, and had long hair which had come loose from its tie and was blowing about his face, but he was unmistakeable anyway.

 

“General,” Daniel squinted, saw the stripes, “yes, General, my name is Dr Daniel Jackson. We’ve traveled a long way to ask for your help.” He glanced behind him. ‘If you could perhaps ask your men here to verify our arrival…”

 

“Barker!” Landry sounded impatient rather than shocked, and Walter reflected philosophically that the Stargate programme would do that a man. Captain Barker appeared onscreen as Daniel stepped back, looking slightly nervous. “Barker! How did these people arrive at our Alpha site?”

 

“Uh, in a puddle jumper Sir,” Barker offered. “They say they came from …”

 

“Ancient Egypt!” Walter breathed, just as Barker said “5000 years ago, Sir” with an exceedingly doubtful look on his face.

 

Landry took only a second before his brain kicked in and he frowned. “The SG1 team lost in the attempt to recover the ZPM?” he asked, and heard Jack’s voice from behind Barker say “Yes! Finally!”

 

Landry couldn’t help a grin. That was Jack O’Neill all right.

 

xxxxx

 

“So.”

 

General O’Neill regarded his alter ego with a jaundiced eye. The man was deeply tanned and lined, whippet thin and obviously as strong as an ox because he had lifted a loaded trunk out of the way in Daniel’s overcrowded office without breaking a sweat. General O’Neill surreptitiously patted his own stomach, which was notably softer than it had been just five years earlier, and resolved to cut down on the Washington lunches.

 

“You’re not me,” he tried again, and shook his head. He’d never been particularly good with small talk.

 

“Nope,” the other Jack said laconically, then, taking pity on the general, added, “in my timeline I never got beyond colonel.” He eyed the General’s uniform, stripes on the shoulder, and a faint air of derision twisted his mouth. “Don’t think I could have stood a desk job.”

 

O’Neill felt the sting. “Hey, I saved the world a good few times,” he protested, looking up in appeal. “Didn’t I, Carter?”

 

“Not single-handedly,” she replied absentmindedly, and Jack grunted, amused. The General looked chagrined.

 

“There wasn’t any Stargate in my timeline,” Jack relented, nodding at the uniform. “I mighta made different choices if there had been.”

 

“Yeah…” the General heaved a sigh. “Some things are forced upon us.”

 

“You love it, really,” Colonel Carter said, finishing whatever she was doing on the screen with a flourish. General O’Neill growled at her in token protest.

 

“I think we should be able to send you back, and not mess about with the timeline you’re on,” she told Sam, turning the screen so that the other woman could see some of her calculations. “This new probability programming we’ve accessed in the Asgard database sets the likelihood at 75%.”

 

“Hey, what happens to us if the other 25% kicks in?” the General asked, eyes suddenly focused. “Do we just disappear, or, wake up tomorrow , I don’t know, running a fishing boat out of the Bay harbour?”

Jack lifted an eyebrow at his tone. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” he said mildly, and was the recipient of a puzzled look from his alter-ego. No-one had had time to exchange much in the way of personal history as yet.

 

Colonel Carter shook her head. “No, nothing will happen to us; our timeline will continue on the path it’s on. Should their actions in the past affect the timeline it will be a new timeline, created in that instant.” Everyone looked blank, so she tried again to explain. “Although they come from virtually identical timelines, the Daniels across the hall are not in fact from one timeline, they are from two. The canoptic jar which was buried with the video camera, and the ZPM, were placed after the split between timelines had occurred, and therefore we were able to retrieve them in our timeline.” She paused. “Is this making any sense?”

 

The two Jacks slowly shook their heads in unison, but Sam got it, suddenly. “Ah, so the tablet we found, telling us where the second gate was, was made by Daniel after the split had occurred and the timelines had already diverged. Without that tablet we would not have been able to go back and try to put things right.” She nodded to herself, neurons she hadn’t used in years firing on all cylinders. “I’m guessing you haven’t come across the tablet either. “ She glanced at the others, as Daniel’s voice could be heard from the office opposite, opening the door. ‘What we want to achieve here is to get rid of the Wraith who have found their way into our galaxy without creating a split which is so great that the Stargate program never came into existence, am I right?

 

Colonel Carter nodded, smiling. “There will be a divergence,” she explained to the O’Neills, “there has to be, but the hope is that the differences between the timelines will be as slight as the ones between their timeline and ours,” and she indicated her double and Colonel O’Neill.

 

Sam made a small noise of protest, and Jack said “Woah, don’t go making assumptions there Colonel,” just as Daniel, followed by Daniel, walked in to the room, and stopped, looking at the frowning faces. “What?” he said, eyebrows raised.

 

Xxxxxx

 

The explanations took a while, especially as Daniel was so intrigued by this glimpse into a very different timeline that he insisted it all be recorded, and it took some time to get that arranged. Once it had been clearly established that Sam and Jack were from a timeline doomed to fall to the Go’auld, whereas Daniel had merely come from one where Jack fished his pond in vain (to the best of his and their knowledge), General Carter, asked about Teal’c, and Sam’s face fell.

 

“The symbiote…” she shuddered involuntarily, and Carter winced in sympathy, “matured about a year after we arrived in the past. Teal’c could hear it whispering to him, filthy things, and he killed it himself. After that he only had, what, three days?” she looked to Jack for confirmation and he nodded, grim-faced, “yes, three days, before his organs failed.” She could feel the tears coming to her eyes, even all these years on. “He saved our lives, you know.”

 

Carter reached out a sympathetic hand to lay on her counterpart’s shoulder. “He’s done the same for us, many times,” she told the other woman gently. Daniel cleared his throat. “I did try to find tretonin,” he said, somberly. “I could find no trace of the Tokra and was reluctant to dig too deep in case I drew the attention of another G’oauld to Earth.” His face twisted. “It hurt, losing him twice. It hurt losing all of you,” he said, glancing around the room.

 

There was a pause, and then both O’Neill’s cleared their throats identically, stopped with their mouths open to say something, then glared at each other. Carter fought a grin.

 

“Go ahead,” the Colonel said magnanimously, waving his hand, and the General cleared his throat again.

 

“Um,” he said, aware that the dramatic moment had past. “So, what’s the plan then?”

 

xxxxxxx

 

Bringing in two people who had fought the Wraith before was a good idea, Sam reflected, but she wondered how McKay and Shepherd ever actually got anything done. There was a constant low-grade bickering between them, and it had a bitter edge to it. From what she could gather, Colonel Shepherd, who had the Ancient gene, knew how to get the puddle jumper in to the Hive, and where exactly to set charges to blow the filthy thing to kingdom come. McKay was busy calculating their timeline, pointing out that the charges would have to be set far enough ahead to allow the jumper to leap back to 2012 before the explosion, presumably, altered the timeline sufficiently that Shepherd might return to find another version of himself waiting in the gate room. Sam could appreciate that this was an unsettling prospect. She glanced over at General Carter, who was sitting patiently, chin in hand, waiting for the two men to finish wrangling over details.

 

“The greatest likelihood of a break in the timeline comes with the explosion,” McKay was insisting. “If we set the charges for half an hour to spare, we’ll have time to exit the Hive and transport ourselves back to the future.” He grinned. “At 88 miles per hour.” Shepherd gave him an exasperated, if fond, look. It was at odds with his earlier sniping and Sam wondered what had come between these two to taint what had obviously been a very close friendship.

 

“Rodney,” Shepherd was saying now, steadily, “there’s a flaw in your plan.” McKay immediately looked outraged. Sam remembered the puffed up boaster she had met in her own timeline. This McKay didn’t like being told he was wrong either. “What?” he blustered, shuffling paper around, “this is foolproof, well, as foolproof as one can be when dealing with time travel and the bending of the laws of physics…” but Shepherd interrupted him.

 

“There is no ‘we’,” he said, gently but firmly. “I’ll be going, Rodney. You’ll be staying here.”

 

The high colour in McKay’s cheeks, engendered by the supposed slight on his calculations, faded in a heartbeat, and left him pasty white. “Uh uh,” he said, eyes wide. “This is something we both do if we do it at all Shepherd, no way will I let you go alone, you’ll screw something up, and you’ll need me there to fix it, no way…” He was shaking his head vigorously.

 

“There’s a very good chance that I might not come back from this, Rodney.” John’s voice was still calm, still even, but his eyes were locked with the blue ones opposite him. “This may well be a one way deal.”

 

“Even more reason why I won’t let you go alone!” McKay’s voice had risen to almost a squeak and he blinked, then cleared his throat, looking slightly abashed. Shepherd’s lips had thinned.

 

“Does Jennifer know you’re volunteering to exit the timeline, possibly for good?” he asked, and his voice was low and savage. Ah, Sam thought, so it was a woman who had come between them. That made sense in light of the looks she had seen them casting at each other, not so surreptitiously, earlier

 

McKay blanched, and then answered, just as low and just as savage. “If you had bothered to be around over the course of the last year,” and Sam could hear the italics, “you would know that Jen and I parted, as friends, months ago now.” He drew back, schooling his face. “Of course she’ll miss me if I don’t come back.” He glanced around, a flash of the arrogance Sam remembered from her timeline crossing his face. “Everyone will miss me. The world will miss me.” He focused back on Shepherd, who had gone very still, and when he spoke again it was in a different tone, with the slightest hint of pleading beneath the assurance. “I’m coming, John. Final word.”

 

xxxxxxx

 

“I’ve spotted another difference in your timeline to mine,” Sam told Carter as they walked back from the briefing down the corridor. “In my timeline Dr Rodney McKay was an arrogant, entitled little shit, who was much too frightened to step through the Stargate, let alone go on an actual mission with danger attached.”

Carter laughed. “He didn’t start out that differently here, either,” she acknowledged, pushing open the door to cafeteria. “It’s amazing what five years in another galaxy can do for a man,” and Sam nodded, because, yes, that made sense too. Then her eyes fell on the dessert trolley and lit up. “Blue Jello!” She snagged the glass and dug in, not bothering to sit at a table. “Oh my God I’ve missed this!”

 

“You’re welcome,” Carter said absently, her attention suddenly elsewhere, and Sam, turning, saw Masha at a table at the far end of the room, poking suspiciously with a fork at a piece of what looked like meatloaf. Opposite her sat General O’Neill, leaning forward and talking, obviously explaining the mystery meat. Masha sniffed, unimpressed, and the General turned his head, catching Carter’s eye, the emotion naked on his face even from a distance.

 

“She looks so like Charlie,” Carter breathed, then moved off across the room, to join her Jack. Sam, uncertain, decided to leave them for now. Masha had grasped instantly the concept of other versions of themselves. Sam hadn’t thought to ask if Carter and the General had children together but, from the look on his face, she was guessing not, and she felt sadness for them. Her Daniel was nowhere in sight, but he had had Orren with him and so Sam sat, and prepared to savour what would most likely be her last ever experience of blue Jello.

 

xxxxxx

“So.” Daniel realised he felt woefully under-equipped to deal with this. His counterpart had Orren slung casually on his hip, and the small boy’s bright blue eyes were regarding him with deep suspicion. Two and a half was not an age at which alternate timelines were easy to explain, and Daniel wasn’t sure if anyone had even tried. He had been introduced as “Uncle Daniel”.

 

“So,” he tried again, “Orren is yours and, um, Sam’s son, is that right?”

 

“Mmm hmm” the other Daniel said, eyes still scanning the book in front of him. He swung the boy off his hip and seated him on the edge of the desk. “Sit still” he told him firmly.

 

“And Masha,” Daniel pressed, “Masha is Jack and Sam’s daughter, correct?”

 

“Correct.” His counterpart looked at him amused, hair lying over his shoulders in a ponytail. Daniel didn’t think he could bear to keep his hair that long. They were most definitely not the same, he and this man. This man had had a son with Sam, for one thing, and Daniel bit down on the small spark of jealously that ignited.

 

“So, did she and Jack break up?” he asked, going for casual, but alt-Daniel (as he had begun to think of him in his head) frowned. “Of course not,” he said as if Daniel were saying something absolutely absurd. “They had this instant connection.” He snorted. “As they seem to do in every timeline and alternate universe yet discovered, am I right?”

 

He was right, Daniel acknowledged. Alt-Daniel took pity on him.

 

“We’re a family,” he explained gently. “The three of us, and the children. Jack is Orren’s father as much as I am, and Masha is mine as much as she is Jack’s.” He paused, his eyes keen. “Does that shock you?”

 

“No!” Daniel was quick to deny that. “In fact, it seems eminently sensible, given the situation in which you found yourself.” His eyes were drawn again to Orren’s, blue to blue. “I’m a little, wistful, maybe,” he admitted, reaching out and running a finger down the toddler’s soft cheek. Orren, glaring, opened his mouth and tried to bite him, and Daniel retreated quickly, unable to help laughing. Orren’s father was the one who was shocked, telling his son in no uncertain terms that biting was utterly unacceptable. Orren, fed up and probably hungry, glowered, a sulky expression on his face that Daniel had to admit to seeing in the mirror a few times when things hadn’t gone the way he wanted.

 

“No harm done,” he said, holding up his uninjured finger. “Perhaps we should get him something to eat though.” He bit his lip, then rushed on. “Ah, this may be a bit too personal, but um, you and Jack? Does the relationship extend…” he grimaced, and shook his head, “Sorry, forget I asked.”

 

But the look on his counterpart’s face was warm, and understanding. “We’re a family,” he said again, slowly, and smiled, “with all that entails,” and Daniel felt a bright red blush climbing up his face, as if he were a teenager, not a man well into his forties.

Orren, thoroughly fed up now, broke the moment by opening his mouth and wailing in Ancient Egyptian about the lack of food, and both Daniels leapt to attention, the conversation dropped, for the moment anyway. Daniel had ideas about how he might share that information, at some later stage.

 

xxxxxxx

 

The jumper was loaded, with the addition of John and Rodney and an alarming large amount of firepower, which Sam was eyeing warily and keeping the children away from. The plan was simple; Jack would pilot back them through the gate to Eritha, avoiding an unnecessary appearance in Earth’s airspace and then back to Ancient Egypt, where the five of them would disembark. Shepherd would take over the jumper controls and he and McKay would go in search of the Hive. Once found, they would infiltrate it and set C4, on long charges, in the most vulnerable areas, before hightailing it out of there and hopping back to 2012 before the timeline had a chance to shift. Carter had pointed out to the group that it meant the loss of their jumper, but that couldn’t be helped.

 

“Seventh Chevron engaged” Walter’s voice intoned, and there was the whoosh as the wormhole established. Sam reached out a hand to John, who stood next to her. She had something important to say

 

“Remember, Colonel,” she tilted her head to look at Rodney beside him, “and you, Dr McKay, that you will always have a place to come back to it you don’t manage to jump back before the hive explodes.” It was very important to her that they understood this, knew they would not be stranded in the past alone. Rodney nodded, face pale but set, and John squeezed her shoulder briefly in thanks. “Of course,” McKay muttered, sotto voce, “we’re more likely to blow up with the Hive than anything else,” and John glared at him. “This is your goddamn plan, McKay,” he began, but then the jumper activated and slid forward, and his words were lost in the tumble of particle disintegration.

 

xxxxxxx

 

“I told you it wouldn’t go exactly to plan!” Rodney, petrified but triumphant, was clinging to the console as John tried to avert the four gliders which had cottoned on to their presence in the Hive and had followed them out the doors before the emergency shutdown had kicked in. Thankfully these gliders were an early model, and the jumper’s cloak made it a relatively easy job to avoid them.

 

“Seriously? You want to gloat now?” John asked, wrenching the jumper off to one side and taking out a glider with a well-placed shot. ‘While we’re in the middle of a firefight?”

 

Rodney had gone an interesting shade of green. His insides were out of the habit of space dodgems. He shook his head, keeping his lips pressed tightly together. John took out another glider and Rodney risked possible disaster to hiss “Send us forward! The timeline could be splitting as we speak!”

 

“Nah,” John said comfortably, and grinned as glider no 3 exploded, its debris spattering the jumper’s shield. “Your calculations said not until the Hive explodes, and we’ve got at least another ten minutes before the charges go off.” He looped the loop, quite deliberately, and chuckled at Rodney’s indignant expression. “I don’t want to leave any of these clowns out here,” he explained, lining up with the last glider, and at that moment the Hive exploded in a bright yellow ball of flames, the force from the blast knocking the glider off course and buffeting their craft as if it were a leaf in a waterfall.

 

“Shit!” John swore, fighting to get back control. The last glider drifted in to view, its pilot, jaw hanging slackly open in disbelief, clearly visible. Rodney had a moment to appreciate that the Wraith of this time were considerably less evolved than their counterparts 5000 years on the future, their mouthparts in particular still resembling those of giant insects, before John, with a growl, blew the glider to pieces. Then they sat, letting the jumper drift, staring at the remains of the Hive floating past them, dead and cold already.

 

“Fuck.” John shook his head, and turned to Rodney, who was staring out the window with wide eyes. “Someone must have discovered our C4 and fucking fired on it or something.” He shook his head, his face grim. “I’m sorry Rodney. This means we can’t go home, doesn’t it?”

 

McKay drew a deep breath, and John braced himself for the tirade, ready to remind Rodney that he himself had insisted that he come along, rather than the other way round, but the rant didn’t come. Instead, Rodney was turning towards him with a curiously vulnerable, open expression on his face, and John felt his heart melt a little bit. “Aw man,” he began, but Rodney held up his hand.

 

“We can never go home again,” he said slowly, as if he were trying the words out, and John shrugged, then nodded. “We can never go home again,” Rodney repeated, slightly more strongly, and his eyes found John’s. There was something approaching amazement in them, John realised, and, despite his priding himself on his ability to read people’s intentions, he was completely taken by surprise when Rodney lunged over the console, pinning his lips to John’s in a messy, uncoordinated and, to be honest, somewhat painful kiss. John grunted, shifted to get a better angle, took control of the kiss and turned it into something hotter, wetter and a lot more focused. It was some minutes before they broke apart, panting heavily, for air, and Rodney was grinning. John, stupidly happy and ridiculously aroused, just looked up at him.

 

“We can never go home again,” Rodney repeated, for the third time, then, “I can live with that,” and he caught John’s waiting lips in another, perfect, clinch.

 

ENDS 


End file.
